This program presents John Buchanan, the journalist who uncovered recent information adding to the growing body of knowledge about the Bush family’s involvement with Nazi industry. In addition to discussion of Prescott Bush’s participation in the Nazi flight capital program that moved the Third Reich’s funds out of Europe and into neutral countries after World War II, the program sets forth John Buchanan’s harrowing experience at the hands of vengeful government officials looking to punish him for his efforts. Another important discovery concerns John’s uncovering of the fact that Prescott Bush, Sr. was an early financier of the Liberty League, a domestic fascist organization that plotted to overthrow President Roosevelt in 1934.

Program Highlights Include: Description of the establishment by listeners to this program of a website that features the declassified documents about the Bush family’s involvement with Nazi industry; John’s discussion of a law suit against the Bush family by two Auschwitz survivors; further revelations concerning the Bush-connected Hamburg-Amerika line’s pro-Nazi activities in the United States; a successful wager John undertook with The Guardian (a British paper) betting that they could not impugn the authenticity of the documents he had uncovered.

1. This interview highlights John Buchanan’s political odyssey, undertaken to uncover the truth of the Bush family’s involvement with Nazi industry. In FTR#435, we examined John’s magnificent articles written for The New Hampshire Gazette about the Bush family’s Third Reich connections. Most important of the revelations contained in Buchanan’s articles is the disclosure that Prescott Bush (Sr.) continued his involvement with the Nazi money machine after World War II. Specifically, he continued to deal with individuals and institutions that were moving Nazi monies out of Germany and into neutral countries between the years of 1945 and 1951. This places Bush squarely in the Bormann flight capital milieu, about which we have spoken so often. (The text of the New Hampshire Gazette articles is reproduced in the description for FTR#435. The declassified documents themselves are available online.)

2. The substance of the Bush family’s involvement with Nazi industry can be found in the broadcasts cited immediately above. Mr. Emory feels it would be pointless to restate the details, in that they have been presented so often before. FTR#479 contains the most recent treatment of the subject. This program will only highlight aspects of the research that have not been discussed previously.

3. Among the points raised by Mr. Buchanan is the fact that after his articles were printed in The New Hampshire Gazette, almost no news organizations would follow up on the story. The Guardian engaged in a friendly wager with Mr. Buchanan, that no one could impugn the authenticity of the documents he had uncovered. John notes that recently two Auschwitz survivors have filed a $40 billion suit against the Bush family because some of their investments utilized slave labor. In particular, Mr. Buchanan notes that the Bush family had some stock in the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, which used slave labor at Auschwitz.

4. John relates how a group of listeners in the Midwest (high school students and their teacher) obtained copies of the documents he had uncovered and put them on the web, with copyrighted introductions that he had written. Mr. Emory notes that if teenagers can do something this brave, heroic and important, adult listeners should be able to do more.

5. Next, John presents a harrowing tale of some of the official retribution to which he was subjected because of his investigations. Detained by two people misrepresenting themselves as “Secret Service Agents,” John was told he was being investigated for allegedly threatening the life of the President of the United States. No concrete proof was given (as he had done no such thing), but they nonetheless demanded, and received, access to all of John’s personal records and contacts. After that, he was detained in Florida and told he had threatened the life of someone he had never met and whose name was not presented to him. He was then told that his public defender had lost his file and that he was in deep trouble. He would probably be convicted, according to the legal authorities. Fortunately, a benefactor came to his assistance and he was released and exonerated.

6. Mr. Buchanan then relates some information that he had just gleaned from the files of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee. In those files, he found that the Hamburg-Amerika Line, one of the most prominent of the Bush family’s Nazi businesses, was financing a Nazi newspaper in the United States and supporting the establishment of a full-blown Nazi movement in this country.

7. Among the most substantively interesting of John’s recent discoveries is the fact that Prescott Bush was an early financier of the Liberty League, a domestic fascist organization that was the primary element in the 1934 fascist plot to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“ . . . Dr. Scheid also affirmed, ‘The ground must now be laid on the financial level for borrowing considerable sums from foreign countries after the war.’ As an example of the kind of support that had been most useful to Germany in the past, Dr. Scheid cited the fact that ‘patents for stainless steel belonged to the Chemical Foundation, Inc. New York, and the Krupp Company of Germany, jointly, and that of the United States Steel Corporation, Carnegie, Illinois, American Steel & Wire, National Tube, etc., were thereby under an obligation to work with the Krupp concern.’ He also cited the Zeiss Company, the Leica Company, and the Hamburg-Amerika line as typical firms that had been especially effective in protecting German interests abroad. He gave New York addresses to the twelve men.”